Monday, 5 December 2011

A box of treasures…

I have no idea why my great aunt didn’t want them but she had heard from my gran we’d been researching the family tree and thought we would like them, which was really lovely of her.

I love old photos and here are a few of my favourites.

My gran and grandad getting married in 1959. I think I’ve mentioned her wedding dress before. A few years ago we found it in a box in their garage. It’s beautiful, and she still has the head-dress and veil. My great-gran made the whole thing for her and it’s tiny. Needless to say we made her move it to a safe place in the house.

That’s my great-gran on the far right in the above photo, she was tiny, we called her our little gran. This is the only photo we have of her.

My big great-gran in the 20’s, May. I only ever had two great-grans, and they are both my mum’s grandmas. May was my grandad’s mum and she was a formidable woman who lived to 96. A lot of the photos centre around her so the bulk of them must have been her collection.

May’s mother and father Norah and Joseph, my great, great grandparents. He died in 1912 aged 38.

May with her husband Herbert (this is the only photo where he doesn’t look grumpy, my gran assures me he looked pretty mean in real life too) and their daughter my aunty Betty. I love that my great gran is in a full swimming costume but he’s just rolled up his trouser bottoms and hasn’t even taken off his suit jacket. He’ll be wearing braces under that jacket too, he is in all the other photos.

Isn’t family history fascinating? We’ve managed to get the tree back to about 1600 in several directions and although my mum knew most of these people I’ve never seen some of them before, and we’ve certainly never seen them young. They used to just be a list of names and dates in genes reunited but this makes them real.

There are about 100 photos in all, and it took ages to scan and identify everyone in them – some are still unidentified like this one:

Look at those amazing dresses, especially the one the little girl in the front is wearing. I wish I knew who they were.

1 comment:

I love old family (and not!) photos! So much history, so many stories. I visited my Granny recently and was rooting through her fabric scraps to use for a project, and each had memories attached, like where it was from, if someone had sent it, what she had made or altered. Sometimes I get the idea that the older generation sometimes hold back from talking about the olden days too much, but I love it!